


Five Days in the Practice Room

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Marco Polo (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 18:38:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10668483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: “I still do not understand if I am the Khan’s guest or his prisoner.”His new hobby, more like. But Hundred Eyes says, “Which you would prefer to be?”Or, five scenes from the mentorship of Marco Polo.





	Five Days in the Practice Room

Marco Polo is young and severely untrained. It is not just the inexperience in martial arts that irks Hundred Eyes. That’s fine—many young soldiers are untrained until they join the army. But his emotions are wild and rebellious, and he has very little self control.

True, it would test anyone’s patience to the limit to be abandoned at a strange court, now property of a strange ruler. So Hundred Eyes does not judge. But he does take Marco’s measure time and time again—and worries about whether this is a man he can train, wonders when he will ever settle down the way any practical minded Mongol would.

“I saw the Khan today,” Marco says, as he circles Hundred Eyes warily. “It seems I am to travel with his tax collector.”

“That is good,” Hundred Eyes says. He can get out his energy instead of having a nervous breakdown then, and maybe finally find the stability to actually learn some of what Hundred Eyes is trying to teach him.

“I will travel the city. I am not permitted to leave.”

“You would leave with no escort? Travel alone to catch up with the father who left you here?” Hundred Eyes shakes his head. “Common sense would dictate the same as the Khan.”

The boy is still circling. His feet are light on the ground, making very little sound. Perhaps he thinks this will make it harder for Hundred Eyes to pinpoint where he is, but he would do better to step more firmly. Hundred Eyes could sweep his legs now, knock him over easily. But he has done that enough in the past couple days, and there are other lessons to be taught.

“I still do not understand if I am the Khan’s guest or his prisoner.”

His new hobby, more like. But Hundred Eyes says, “Which you would prefer to be?”

Marco mutters, “I would prefer to be somewhere else.”

He lunges.

Hundred Eyes doesn’t even need to hit him to knock him over this time. He only sidesteps the blow aimed at his gut (not his face, at least—that much is wise) and puts an ankle inconveniently where Marco is trying to step through. Marco trips. Falls.

Effort saved is far better.

Hundred Eyes stares down at Marco. The foolish Latin who refuses to learn martial arts or to learn his place. Longing to be somewhere else—yet he does not even specify where that place might be. Hundred Eyes doubts he knows. Wryly, he shakes his head. “I’m afraid that is not an option.”

* * *

 

Marco is perhaps getting better, if getting simultaneously cannier and more reckless can be said to be getting better. Now he’s graduated from refusing to answer the Khan’s questions to contradicting princes in front of the entire court and getting bitten by pythons. Hundred Eyes somewhat wishes he remained simply stupid rather than actively suicidal but at least he listens to Hundred Eyes now, occasionally, and he does seem to be learning from their lessons. It gives Hundred Eyes hope that he may survive another few years at court without getting killed.

Today, however, he is distracted. He always is to some extent—matters at court are enough to keep any man’s mind busy. Hundred Eyes would be distracted too if he did not take concentration as an art in itself. But today he can guess what is on his student’s mind.

“Are you worried for your father?” he asks.

Marco steps back. “My father? Oh, yes.”

A month ago even Hundred Eyes could not get him to stop thinking about his father. Niccolo Polo, who wanted silk so badly he would betray even his own son. Not the kind of man Hundred Eyes would usually spend much thought on, but Marco was broken over it for a long time. There is no way he is truly as unbothered by his father’s recent departure to travel the Silk Road again as he seems.

“You chose rightly to brand him. As did the Khan in not granting him pardon. He is a criminal, yet your father. The punishment was well balanced.”

“So I believe.”

If he believes this, what bothers him? Hundred Eyes parries a lazy punch and shoves Marco back, not fully succeeding in knocking him down. Marco has learned to set his feet more firmly. That is good.

“You believe your father is a skilled traveler.”

“He is.”

“If it is meant to be, he will travel safely back to Greece.”

“Venice,” Marco mutters. Then, “I do believe this is so.”

He strikes at Hundred Eyes again, and again Hundred Eyes blocks, this time twisting Marco’s arm into a lock before releasing him. Marco pauses, probably trying to memorize the movement. A good attempt, but pointless. One cannot learn such a move after only observing it once.

Finally, he says, “We still do not know who made the attempt on the Khan’s life.”

Hundred Eyes frowns. This is not what he thought was bothering Marco. Such worries are more pertinent to the princes and the Mongol court than their young guest. Still, it does not truly surprise him. Only he hopes, after all the trouble Marco has gotten into already, he does not plan to delve further into courtly intrigue.

“Byamba and I are asking questions,” Marco says. “Where would you start?”

“You already have plans.”

“Maybe.”

“Then be careful. The danger is not to the Khan alone.”

* * *

 

He never expected to be sent on a covert mission with Marco, but when it happens it does not startle him either. Marco, who was once only an outlier of the Khan’s court, has been rising steadily in favor. It is rare for the Khan to trust someone who is also a relative unknown—someone, also, whom no one at court would truly mourn. And then there is the fact that Marco is one of the few who knows Hundred Eyes well now, and that Hundred Eyes is one of the few with a chance of defeating Jia Sidao, master of praying mantis kung fu, in a one on one battle.

The mission goes as well as could be expected. Hundred Eyes makes his attempt, Marco takes his notes, and they leave in the company of a young girl whose life they are probably saving for the good of the Mongol court. Hundred Eyes has known of less successful missions and battles, especially against enemies as clever as Jia Sidao.

A desperate assignment to begin with.

Marco, however, seems bothered. His mission ends with success. He has taken his notes, delivered them to the Khan, played his role. Doubtless this will help the war effort. Doubtless the Khan will be grateful when Xianyang falls.

But he seems more restless than Hundred Eyes himself.

“You wish you had done more?”

“The invasion still seems uncertain,” Marco says. He is playing with a broadsword, lunging and parrying with a nonexistent enemy. Hundred Eyes, for now, does not spar, but is content to listen to his pupil play games with a less potent foe than they have faced of late.

“You wish I had done more,” he says.

He is right. Marco pauses and says, “You could not have done more. The guards came too fast…”

“It is questionable whether I would have won,” Hundred Eyes says. “Jia Sidao is a strong man and a smart one. And well trained. It would be better were he dead, but it was not my day.”

“I do not judge you,” Marco protests.

Hundred Eyes did not think so in the first place. He says, “It bothers you that I did not win. Not that Jia Sidao lives but that he defeated me.”

Marco is silent for a long moment before saying, “Yes, master.”

“Why do you want me to be infallible? Is it because you have fallen so many times at my hand?” Hundred Eyes asks. “Or is it because after your father’s failure you need a new strength to guide you?”

“Forgive me, master,” Marco says. “I do not know.”

It must be the first. Hundred Eyes knows all too well that Marco has taken Kublai Khan as the second.

* * *

 

When Marco is condemned to death, Hundred Eyes does not go to visit him in his cell. He knows he should but he doesn’t.

Instead, he meditates in the practice room where they have spent so many hours together. Tomorrow he will face a great loss. He must be ready to face it with serenity and calm—for how can the pupil face death bravely if the teacher weeps?

When news of the pardon comes to him he is relieved. There are levels of detachment even he has not yet reached, it seems.

* * *

 

Xianyang falls. Prince Jingim is wounded, but he will heal. Jia Sidao dies at Hundred Eyes’ hands—perhaps that will bring back to Marco his aura of invincibility. Kokachin (Marco’s secret lover whom everyone knows about really) is engaged to Prince Jingim. And at the end of the day, everything is very much the same in the practice room back in Khanbaliq, where the swords still hang peacefully on the walls and the wood floor is still smooth beneath Hundred Eyes’ feet and the student is still a reckless mess (if somewhat more experienced now than before).

And the job of teaching him, Hundred Eyes reminds himself, is still as important as ever. A city has fallen to Marco’s trebuchets and Kublai’s men, but while Kublai has achieved the goal of his lifetime, Marco remains in many ways as loose and rootless as ever. Still disconnected from the majority of court, still the foreigner. Still so determined and desperate to please, and still in many ways so vulnerable. Still requiring Hundred Eyes’ guidance.

“Have you decided yet which you prefer?”

Marco, who is getting up from the floor after being knocked on his stomach, asks, “Which of what, master?”

“To be the Khan’s prisoner or his guest?”

Marco laughs. “That old question?”

He aims a blow at Hundred Eyes, towards his neck. Hundred Eyes hooks his elbow and bowls him over on his back. When he lands, breath knocked out of him, he only laughs again. It seems he is constantly happy lately.

Hundred Eyes wishes he could be equally happy with him, but he is not naïve enough to think one victory will make this court a place of peace.

“You have not answered it yet,” he says, helping Marco up. “And I know you now would not rather be somewhere else.”

Marco shrugs. “You said prisoners and guests were the same here once.”

“The same except in the mind. Tell me, which are you? Which would you choose to be?”

Marco stills. Quietly, he says, “Could I choose, I would be the Khan’s man body and soul. I would be his son.”

Hundred Eyes smiles. “That is not an option either, Latin.”

“I know.”

Always an outsider, never a true Mongol. And certainly he will never be as Jingim to the Khan nor as Byamba. Marco has chosen for himself a father who is like a stone idol, distant and unattainable. He will not fail Marco as Niccolo Polo did. But that is because neither Marco nor Kublai will ever admit what attachment they have to each other, except perhaps to someone like Hundred Eyes, who will neither judge them nor help them to grow closer. And it is for the best if they do not grow closer. Marco is already in danger enough. Better he remain marginally the outsider than join the Khan’s innermost circle and make himself a target for every power-hungry Mongol lord in Kublai’s empire. Far, far better.

Hundred Eyes smacks Marco lightly between the shoulders and says, “Your place is what you make of it. I will teach you to be rooted in any home you choose.”

 “I am home, master.”

“That is well, then,” Hundred Eyes says. And it is well, for now. Perhaps it will be years before the winds blow this boy home to Venice. Until then, Hundred Eyes will suffice to keep him alive.

**Author's Note:**

> I told my roommate about Hundred Eyes. "Yah he's this monk dude...also he's blind...and good at martial arts...age unknown but pretty old...kung fu is a way of life...mentor to protagonist..."  
> She said he was a walking stereotype.  
> I don't disagree but also TROPES ARE NOT BAD and I love him so here, have a fic about his relationship with Marco Polo.  
> Comments and kudos would be much appreciated.


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